If interviews don’t help an applicants chances why do they interview? Or is the interview process improving your odds? What is the reason Dartmouth would request and interview typically?
One of my interviewers told me that it just to keep alumni active for the school, but I just do them just in case. Don’t hurt unless they write up a bad report.
What if a student isn’t contacted? My son hasn’t heard from anyone at Dartmouth yet.
I had my alumni interview last week. It honestly was a great opportunity for me to hear a Dartmouth graduate’s perspective on the school. I got a lot out of it…walked out with even more of a desire to attend Dartmouth! Darn 
If you don’t get offered an interview, I’m pretty sure it’s just because there aren’t enough alumni to go around (or maybe just specifically in your region). Not getting contacted is certainly NOT an indication of rejection.The schools try and get their alumni network to reach out to as many applicants as possible not taking into consideration the students’ applications, stats, and what not.
I see this question come up a lot, often worded this same way. The interview is not a large part of your application, but it does help give some additional color commentary on who you are as a person and what motivates you. The college will definitely read the interview reports for more context about you, and can read things that aren’t quite so black and white as application data. The only time it really affects admission is treating it as kind of a tiebreaker, and only Excellent or Awful interviews would really sway them by itself.
The college does not count no interview as a negative because volunteers run the interviews and the college can’t guarantee every applicant will be able to have a nearby alum to conduct the interview. It’s not fair for someone in the corner of Idaho to have it counted against them for not driving 3 hours to their nearest alumnus.
The other piece that forces me to reply to these questions is every time this is posted, the perspective always seems to be from the “how will this help my application” perspective. I get this is first on your mind right now, but also our interviews are focused on being a conversation and giving you a first-hand perspective on what the college is actually like. We’re not a brochure, we don’t work for Admissions – we were there and we lived it… what would you like to know? What can we tell you about Dartmouth from OUR perspective? Even allowing you to ask questions to us that you were nervous to ask Admissions since it might look poorly on your application chances.
50% of the interview is to interview you, but 50% of the interview is for you to interview us. Remember that!